Balloons as a base

When I was in Vietnam, I once heard a trio of street musicians play “Ghost Riders in the Sky.” One man plucked a string in a gourd stretched between lengths of bamboo. He could squeeze the bamboo to modulate the tone and produce an amazing range of sounds, including a convincing slide guitar. Another man beat two sticks and kicked out his bell-encrusted foot. A third man fiddled with a cassette deck and managed to get it to belch out horns and horse whinnies and other apparently appropriate sound effects.

The scene of those three earnest musicians is the only pure memory I have of that whole experience. They played the hell out of that song, as you might expect. But I wonder if they understood what it was about.

2

My favorite memory of childhood is being drenched, shirtless, jeans sagging, completely wet all over, running with a pack of other boys in wild abandon, intent on some sport in the rain.

I remember that very clearly, the way we pushed each other to fall in the mud, the way we bled without noticing, the red running down our arms and legs, mixing with the brown of the muck, boys so wild we might have killed each other if we’d kept up, but all in jest, all in good humor.

3

In the morning, we were surprised to see each other. We ate breakfast in the sunlight and everything was yellow in her apartment, her hair most of all. We lay on the blanket till her 11 o’clock class. We walked our separate ways but couldn’t take our eyes off each other. How strong was the tether between us?

4

I got lost once in a crowd of people at the county fair. It was getting dark and there was rain and the field was at an angle and a little river of mud was covering my feet and I couldn’t lift them and I was five and very small and couldn’t see a familiar face in all that swirl of anxious people, staring at me as if they were afraid and I started screaming like a great siren and everything stopped.

It had to. None can resist my power.

5

The lights went out and nobody bothered to turn them back on. At some point, the men changed and began grabbing things that didn’t belong to them. They turned into animals and took whatever they needed and kicked away all challengers. They made weapons and advanced on each other. Many were beaten.

Eventually, a calming authority returned.

6

The acorns were falling on the leaves like raindrops into puddles. There was the constant flap-flap of them falling in this oddly rhythmic way. I listened to them and tried to hear the music, but couldn’t make sense of it, none at all, though I knew they were singing.

7

It was already dark and the train tracks stretched on forever, deeper into the darkness of scrub trees and warehouses. The moon would come in time. All I had was the steady rhythm of the railroad ties while their forms held in the dusk. Sometimes the ties were rotten or twisted and I’d stumble. The moon came up just as I approached the first bridge abutment. The moon came out, thank God, or I would have slept there beneath the bridge.

8

The river was like silver. It breathed up from beneath while the wind tore at me in many directions. All I had were the railroad ties to hold onto and I crawled on my hands and knees, staring down at the water beneath me. I saw a great tree cruise past like a majestic silent float in some midnight parade. I saw sleeping ducks in its branches.

9

The bottom of the boat was filled with old rain water. By the time we had rowed halfway to the island, mosquitos were pouring from the water between my legs.

10

I remember Teddy Tate. He was a mighty strong man worked down at the end of the line stacking palettes and driving the high-lo. He could pitch into any disaster and save the day. He once drove those forks right into the turning gears when the drive shaft went wonky and it looked like it might all blow. It tore the fork clean off the high-lo after twisting it around a few times and dragging the whole thing right to the ground. They let him keep that twisted hunk of metal like the spoils of war.

He was a real standup guy. Quiet though. Man never said more than a couple words at a time. Just that one time he talked when I asked him what the hell he thought he was doing. He said, “If anything catches, we’ll be spun for a ride.”

He knew what he was getting into.

11

Everyone thought he had gone crazy at last, but really he was grieving. When we saw him walk the streets, his gaunt eyes plagued by guilt and horror, he was still hiding the secret, his wife’s cholera. She lay dead in her room three days before he let it be known. He bundled her in ice to have her alone to weep over.

He was a broken man, far gone with heartbreak. We thought he had done her in out of jealousy.

12

When I was, at last, born and free of my first tight swaddle, I stretched my arms and jerked them free and felt the first rush from the core to the extremities and felt the full extent of myself, reaching for everything, just to be, as broadly as I may. I felt then my first fist, my first rich swagger, my first smile curl into my cheek. I felt then like I might be everything that ever was.

13

Long after this, I was walking in the forest and saw a great gray goose walking, confused, with a broken wing. Someone had shot it down, but not killed it. The goose was very scared and very angry and very lost. It looked all about and honked loudly, unconcerned with being heard at close range. It called as loudly as it could so that the sky might hear and come to its rescue.